1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the invention relate generally to telephone communications, and more particularly to the distribution of incoming telephone calls among inbound links of service platforms.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Due to increasingly fierce competition in the global marketplace, customer service, or “customer care,” has become an important facet of the overall business strategy of most large companies. Part of this service involves providing a contact point to which customers may direct questions, comments, concerns, requests and the like. Further, while automated, Internet-based contacts, such as e-mail addresses and web-page Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are widely provided to customers, many people remain more comfortable with the use of the telephone. By way of a simple phone number, such as an ‘800’ number, the customer can often engage in free, fast, direct and interactive contact with a representative of the company.
Many larger businesses devote substantial resources in terms of technology and manpower to provide phone access for its customers. Oftentimes, dozens or hundreds of telephones, possibly located in disparate areas of the world, and each manned by a customer service representative, are required to field the typically large volume of incoming calls. Accordingly, routing these calls in a timely manner to an available representative, or “agent,” can be a daunting task.
FIG. 1 provides a simplified example of a telephone communication system 1 for routing phone calls within such an environment. A company 2 may provide several service platforms 4a, 4b, 4c, each of which provides the capacity to field several phone calls from over one or more collections of phone lines, or “channels,” 6a, 6b, 6c. In this example, each of the channels 6 is coupled with a switch 8 for connecting a phone 10, such as a customer telephone, to a phone of one of the service platforms 4. Various switches and other communication devices likely coupling the various components of FIG. 1 are not shown for the sake of simplicity.
The decision as to which channel 6 to connect with the customer phone 10 is performed by way of a Service Control Point (SCP) 12 coupled with the switch 8. The SCP 12 is part of a signaling system, such as Signaling System 7 (SS7), used for call routing and other call management functions in an intelligent telephone network. The SCP 12 acquires signal information such as the identity of an 800 number being called from the phone 10. This information is then used to query a Routing Processor (RP) 14 of the company 2 by way of a communication link 16, such as an X.25 interface link. The RP 14 uses the query, in addition to information received from one or more of the service platforms 4, to determine how the pending call should be routed. The RP 14 informs the SCP 12 of the desired route of the call by identifying the appropriate channel 6, typically by way of a “label.” In response, the SCP 12 controls the switch 8 to complete the connection between the phone 10 and the particular service platform 4 associated with the channel 6 identified by the RP 14.
Typically, the RP 14 accounts for a number of factors in determining the most efficient route for an incoming call. However, the availability of in-bound channels to each of the service platforms 4 is currently treated as a static factor in such a system 1. For example, fewer agents may be available during a particular time, or a hardware defect may cause a channel 6 or an entire service platform 4 to become inoperative. Thus, fluctuations in the availability of these channels 6, which may change significantly within a short period of time, are not considered by the RP 14, due primarily to a lack of current information from each of the service platforms regarding channel availability. Such information typically must be discovered by a human operator, who must then manually configure the RP 14 to account for the change in availability in the routing of calls to the service platforms 4.
In addition, in the system 1 each incoming call initiates a query and response exchange between the SCP 12 and the RP 14. As a result, the number of calls that may be processed within a given period of time is limited at least by throughput restrictions of the link 16 coupling the SCP 12 and the RP 14.
Also, as shown in FIG. 1, the RP 14 is typically operated by the company 2 hosting the service platforms 4, thus adding the extra burdens of support, maintenance and upgrading of that particular system atop the already numerous tasks for which the company 2 is responsible.